If you want to change the world, a blog may not be the place to start

The use of censorware by repressive governments is now becoming a legitimate policy matter. Conferences are being held, proposals are being made, press articles are being written. And people want to know: how can we make a difference in the fight against world censorship?

Unfortunately, I don't have a good answer. Non-governmental organisations, thinktanks, academic departments and so on all have their own hierarchies and barriers to entry.

Many years ago, when the internet was much smaller, the corresponding reach of an individual aiming to be heard in it was much larger. But the integration of the internet into society at large necessarily meant individuals reverted to being as marginalised in terms of overall influence as they are in society at large. It's not that nobody at all had a voice, but that the standard institutional power structures asserted themselves.

And blogs are no solution. Contrary to blog evangelism, blogging can sometimes even be detrimental in terms of building influence. That's counterintuitive, since the very rare person who achieves substantial influence via a blog is often widely touted as a success story.

But the complementary outcome is not widely publicised - that is, all the people who are blogging their hearts out and never being heard beyond a tiny fan audience. At this point, a blog evangelist usually states that it's possible to be happy even with only a select group of devotees. But they typically don't want to grant that it's also quite reasonable to be unhappy at not getting beyond that level. Talking mainly among a small self-selected group can also lead to a very misleading impression of the reach of one's ideas. The problem is not the scare story of echo chambers breeding dangerous extremists. But when looking into a hall of mirrors, it's very easy to mistake all those reflections for a crowd of supporters. The result can be a large amount of wasted energy, with the only gainers being blog evangelists (roughtype.com).

In the same way that one year of experience repeated 10 times is not necessarily the same as 10 years of experience, constantly preaching to the choir often doesn't advance one's goals much. A saturation point can be reached, and then the audience may become bored with all the retellings of a story they've heard so many times before.

As one activist lamented regarding a censorware controversy: "I think the real lesson here is that, despite all the hype, blogs have not solved the 'gatekeeper' problem. It's no longer true that a handful of media giants control what people get to find out about, but it's still true that an issue doesn't become an 'issue', and has a hard time entering the public consciousness, unless it gets noticed by one of the new 'gatekeepers of information'. People have been complaining about wrong blocks by SmartFilter for nine freaking years, and suddenly BoingBoing [boingboing.net, a very popular website] gets blocked and it's in the New York Times!"

So getting ideas into the media pundit and policy system can be a much more difficult task than simply writing web pages and hoping that somebody, somewhere, reads them. Publicity opportunities such as conferences often serve as a clearing house between public intellectuals and journalists. But it's a very small number of people who get to play there, as working the conference circuit is essentially a job in itself.

There's an inspirational quote attributed to Margaret Mead: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." But there are many groups trying to change the world, some in violent opposition to one another. They can't all succeed; it's a logical impossibility. Similarly, many groups are trying to determine the future shape of the internet; only a few will succeed.

Perhaps it's inevitable that the status required to have a significant internet policy effect will keep rising. But the implications of having to quickly go "up or out" are unfortunate for those who want to change this world.